Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Oil: It's A Good Thing!

So says James Glassman at Tech Central Station:

We use oil -- and other unmentioned but implied addictions like coal and natural gas -- to generate energy that powers our cars, heats our homes, lights our cities, runs our factories. By the standard of what they do for us, fossil fuels are pretty cheap. They provide enormous industrial leverage."

It is fossil fuels that are helping to raise people out of poverty in India and China, fossil fuels that have helped the world economy to grow by 4.5 percent last year, its fastest rate in history. If forced to assign some kind of moral value to oil and gas, I would say they are good, not bad. But why moral language at all? The President -- and I am not even mentioning the claptrap one hears from Speaker Denny Hastert, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter -- is now using the lexicon of extreme environmentalists...